Summary: Turkey is in the inter- national spotlight over the Syrian uprising. So far, it has focused largely on the humanitarian situation taking a moral high ground on the civilians trapped by the conict. Either due to its own ambitious rhetoric or the preferences of other regional and international ac tors, Turkey is expected in some circles to lead international efforts to end the actions perpetrated by the Baath regime. If necessary, this includes the use of force. Following the failure of the Arab League’s peace plan at the UN Security Council, Turkey has vowed to mobilize a coalition oflike-minded states to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis. This effort epitomizes the limited but crucial role Tu rkey could play here: facilitating a coalition at the regional-global nexus, so that a coercive diplomatic solution short of military intervention is forged. Analysis Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Buildingby Şaban Kardaş February 17, 2012 Washington, DC• Berlin• Paris• BrusselsBelgraDe•ankara• BuCharest • WarsaWOffices Analysis Turkey’s Syria Policy at a Glance urkey is sometimes presented as being party to an unolding civil war with heavy sectarian undertones. urkey’ s vocal criticism othe Syrian army’ s military campaign, call or a regime change, and sheltering oSyrian reugees and opposition groups are taken as indicators othe partisan motivations driving its policy. Some see urkey as war-mongering under a humanitarian pretext, while others criticize its reluctance to intervene. However , a briechronological account demonstrates that it has not adopted the current coercive position over- night and had to make some politi- cally costly decisions beore its policycrystallized. Prior to the Arab Spring, the normal- ization oits ties with Syria was a textbook case or urk ey’s regional policies. Te nascent partnership with Damascus was a laboratory in which to develop the instruments oAnkara’ s neighborhood policy: high-level stra- tegic cooperation councils, ree-trade zones, mediation services, visa ree travels, etc. But Ankara did more than try to x its bilateral problems with Damascus. At a time when the Baath regime was under international pres- sure, urkey worked to prevent Syria’s urther isolation, even at the risk osevering ties with its West ern partners. In return, urk ey gained a chance to establish channels ocommunication with Syrian opposition groups. Byengaging both the regime and opposi- tion, urkey hoped to help transorm Syria into a demo cracy. Te Arab Spring demonstrated that the urks might have reached those conclusions rather hastily, and that major limitations to the transor- mative power otheir engagement policy remained. For a brieperiod, it appeared this was the time to realize urkey’s engagement policy by capital- izing on the ties with the regime and opposition. urkey did exactly that. Early on, Prime Minister Erdoğan visited Aleppo, Syria, where he advised Bashar al Assad to heed his people’ s calls and save his country rom carnage. However, demonstrations soon spread throughout Syria, with the opposition calling or comprehensive political reorms. Tough expressing support or demonstrators , urkey advocated or a controlled transition opower under Assad’ s watch, a l eader whose reormist credentials Ankara had condence in. Assad was told to intro- duce political reorms, legalize opposi- tion parties, and prepare the country
Transcript
8/3/2019 Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Building
This effort epitomizes the limitedbut crucial role Turkey could play
here: facilitating a coalition at
the regional-global nexus, so that
a coercive diplomatic solution
short of military intervention is
forged.
Analysis
Turkey’s Syria Policy:
The Challenge of Coalition Building
by Şaban Kardaş
February 17, 2012
Washington, DC• Berlin • Paris • Brussels
BelgraDe • ankara • BuCharest • WarsaW
O f f i c e s
Analysis
Turkey’s Syria Policy at a Glance
urkey is sometimes presented asbeing party to an unolding civil warwith heavy sectarian undertones.urkey’s vocal criticism o the Syrianarmy’s military campaign, call ora regime change, and sheltering o Syrian reugees and opposition groupsare taken as indicators o the partisanmotivations driving its policy. Somesee urkey as war-mongering undera humanitarian pretext, while otherscriticize its reluctance to intervene.
However, a brie chronological accountdemonstrates that it has not adoptedthe current coercive position over-night and had to make some politi-cally costly decisions beore its policy crystallized.
Prior to the Arab Spring, the normal-ization o its ties with Syria was atextbook case or urkey’s regionalpolicies. Te nascent partnership withDamascus was a laboratory in which
to develop the instruments o Ankara’sneighborhood policy: high-level stra-tegic cooperation councils, ree-tradezones, mediation services, visa reetravels, etc. But Ankara did more thantry to x its bilateral problems withDamascus. At a time when the Baathregime was under international pres-sure, urkey worked to prevent Syria’surther isolation, even at the risk o
severing ties with its Western partners.
In return, urkey gained a chance toestablish channels o communicationwith Syrian opposition groups. By engaging both the regime and opposi-tion, urkey hoped to help transormSyria into a democracy.
Te Arab Spring demonstrated thatthe urks might have reached thoseconclusions rather hastily, and thatmajor limitations to the transor-mative power o their engagement
policy remained. For a brie period, itappeared this was the time to realizeurkey’s engagement policy by capital-izing on the ties with the regime andopposition. urkey did exactly that.Early on, Prime Minister Erdoğan visited Aleppo, Syria, where he advisedBashar al Assad to heed his people’scalls and save his country romcarnage. However, demonstrationssoon spread throughout Syria, with theopposition calling or comprehensive
political reorms.
Tough expressing support ordemonstrators, urkey advocatedor a controlled transition o powerunder Assad’s watch, a leader whosereormist credentials Ankara hadcondence in. Assad was told to intro-duce political reorms, legalize opposi-tion parties, and prepare the country
8/3/2019 Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Building
or ree elections. Erdoğan even sent his most trusted o-
cials to assure Assad that this scenario was realistic. WhenAssad announced several reorm packages, urkey claimedcredit or instigating those changes.
Te limited reorm promises, however, ell short o satis-ying the opposition, which gradually gathered pace andstarted to organize abroad, including in urkey. Te opposi-tion neither trusted Assad’s sincerity, nor was ready to settleor a negotiated solution that would leave him in control.o the extent that urkey maintained its hope in Assad’sability to steer a controlled transition, it came under criti-cism that its previous engagement policy had now turned
into a burden, preventing it rom unequivocally supportingthe uprising.
Continuing civilian deaths made urkey’s position increas-ingly unsustainable. So by mid-2011, urkey grew increas-ingly critical o Syria’s response, and Erdoğan argued thaturkey would not allow another massacre like Hama, whereas many as 40,000 civilians were killed in 1982, to takeplace. urkey’s break with Assad took longer. For sometime, urkey entertained the idea that it was not Assadbut the Baath establishment that resisted reorms. But thatthinking also aded away as the crackdown continued intothe summer. In the meantime, urkey allowed the Syrianopposition to organize on its territory, justiying its positionwith the argument that its solidarity was with the people,and the regime could earn urkey’s sympathy only i itrespected popular will. However, by that time, the opposi-tion had rmly embraced the Libya option, i.e., regimechange through military means, and was unhappy abouturkey’s ongoing optimism regarding Assad’s reormistcredentials. Tat position constrained urkey’s ability todeliver a negotiated settlement.
urkey, nonetheless, undertook a last-ditch eort to acili-tate an Assad-led transition in August. Te ailure o thismarked a sea change. urkish Foreign Minister AhmetDavutoğlu spent hours in Damascus trying to convinceAssad to agree to a transition plan, which he reportedly did.However, the redeployment o military units, which hadbeen withdrawn during the urkish ambassador’s moni-toring visit, as per a deal Davutoğlu had brokered, had apsychological impact, comparable perhaps to the episode
prior to Israel’s war on Gaza.1 urkey became rustrated by several unullled pledges o reorm. urkey progressively concluded that the regime had lost its legitimacy and thatthe opposition deserved to be supported as the rightul
representative o the people.
urkey began to openly advocate regime change as the way to end the Syrian quagmire in the all o 2011, believingthat diplomatic avenues were exhausted. Tough rerainingrom backing military intervention, urkey supported theWestern-initiated unilateral sanctions, which were vetoed inOctober 2011 by Russia and China, despite the act that thisattitude contravened urkey’s policy o not acting outsidethe UN-endorsed legitimate platorms. urkey also acceler-ated the dialogue with the opposition at the ocial level, aswell as supporting the Arab League’s diplomatic initiatives.
Te situation has reached a new phase with the ailure o theArab League’s monitoring mission and the rising intensity o the clashes. Te indiscriminate and disproportional useo orce by the regime highlighted the humanitarian tragedyon which urkey was largely ocused. urkey was promptedto take initiatives to try to immediately end the bloodshedand then prevent sectarian divisions rom taking a deeper
1 Israel’s launching of the operation only days after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s meeting
with Erdoğan in December 2008 triggered the series of crises in Turkish-Israeli relations.
8/3/2019 Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Building
hold, believing that the entire region could be enguled with
those repercussions.urkey accelerated the diplomatic track. Davutoğluapproached ehran, hoping to solicit Iran’s cooperationin dampening sectarian tensions in the region, especially considering that ehran remained steadast in its supportor the Baath regime. Complementing such regional initia-tives, urkey also kept a close eye on how the Syrian crisisplayed out at the global level. Davutoğlu’s visit to Moscowahead o the UN vote was one such eort, though it had noobvious success.
Te Russian and Chinese vetoes against the draf Security
Council resolution caused anger in urkey, as demonstratedby this statement issued by Ministry o Foreign Aairs:
Te stage that has been reached by the regime’ssuppressing the desire of the Syrian people … has acquired a threatening nature in which the international peace and security is at risk.2
Te conceptual ramework that underpins this descriptionis one that has been used in the past to justiy humanitarianinterventions. Given its treatment o the population, urkey eels the Baath regime has lost its claim to legitimately
hold power and that the situation justies coercion by theinternational community. Te Syrian is no longer a purely domestic issue.
urkey also expressed disappointment with the “irrespon-sible” use o the UN veto prerogative by Russia and China.urkey appears to be acting with a sense o moral duty toward the Syrian people. Drawing attention to the plighto the civilians trapped in besieged cities, urkey called orurgent action to ensure the provision o humanitarian assis-tance and a halt to the shelling o neighborhoods.
Given its proximity, military capability, and stated concern,some now expect urkey to lead eorts to address theSyrian crisis, even through an international intervention i necessary. Such a development would also square with thenew U.S. policy o leading rom behind, which was imple-mented successully in Libya, and also adds credibility tothe “urkey-leads” scenario, given the new mood o coop-eration between the United States and urkey.
Te statements rom urkish statesmen and the country’saspiration or regional leadership, exemplied in the notiono an “order-instituting” country, have raised expectationsthat urkey would — or should — rise to the challengeand deliver in Syria. Given the nature o the situation, theregional and global ramications o the crisis, and its ownlimitations, however, urkey will be unlikely to lead such aunilateral mission. Te best urkey could deliver would beto acilitate coalition-building on this issue at the regional-global nexus.
The Situation at Hand: Enforcement of Regime Change
At this stage, the purpose o outside involvement wouldhardly be only mediation between parties, but wouldencourage regime change as an end to the bloodshed. Forits part, both morally and geopolitically, urkey put all itschips on a “non-Assad scenario” afer several ailed diplo-matic eorts. Perhaps none o the other actors has engagedwith the matter as deeply as urkey early on in the crisis.urkey concluded that the diplomatic avenues or a negoti-ated settlement were exhausted, and a solution could only be based on the ormation o a new political authority.Russia’s ace-saving eort ollowing its UN veto scarcely impressed urkey. Te road map Damascus presented to
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was all too amiliarto Davutoğlu, who viewed it as recycled version o Assad’searlier promises. urkey has reached such a dug-in prin-cipled position that there is little room or a ace-savingoption, unless there is a comprehensive national reconcili-ation in Syria, under which Assad will make peace with thepeople.
8/3/2019 Turkey’s Syria Policy: The Challenge of Coalition Building
About the AuthorDr. Şaban Kardaş works as an assistant proessor o international rela-
tions in the Department o International Relations at OBB University
o Economics and echnology in Ankara.
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Tis principled position, and the many signals it has already
sent, led to expectations that urkey will go or the military option. Indeed, urkey has stated on many occasions thatthe Assad regime has to be warned that all options are onthe table, and that the international community will doeverything in its power to stop massacres. Nonetheless,urkish leaders dispute that they have told their Westernpartners that they could deliver militarily. urkey hasdone little to prepare or the military option and has statedunequivocally that it is against oreign military intervention.Ankara maintains the hope that with international isolationand other coercive means, regime change in Syria could beachieved.
Regional-Global Nexus
Any solution, be it in the diplomatic or the military realm,will have to come through the global-regional connection,and urkey could make only a limited, but critical, contri-bution there, considering that the positions on Syria arealready entrenched. Afer the ailure o the UN Security Council initiative, Ankara indicated it will seek alterna-tive platorms o legitimacy at the regional level, i neces-sary outside the UN. urkey views regional legitimacy asa substitute or UN-led initiatives. However, there is littlecapacity in the Middle East or tackling the Syrian crisis
beyond diplomatic avenues, let alone undertaking mili-tary intervention. Even orging regional legitimacy will beincomplete, since Iran needs to also be conronted on thediplomatic ront. It will not work or urkey to take the leadin an initiative that will single out Iran, as it will complicatethe already delicate balance between ehran and Ankara, asituation urkey seeks to avoid. Progress in Syria withoutIran’s participation could be done only i the issue is region-ally owned.
Eorts to address the Syrian crisis will have to be under-taken in concert with global actors and involve the UN,
meaning the Russians will have to be convinced. Afer beingsidelined in Libya, Russia needs to be reassured that itsgeopolitical interests in Syria and its international standingwill be respected. I the UN will be bypassed again, as inKosovo, it will have to be done through a strong regionalmechanism and with the decisive involvement o the UnitedStates. In any case, urkey hardly commands the resourcesand wherewithal to achieve such an outcome.
Te best urkey could do currently is to lead initiatives
that would alleviate the human suering and pave the way towards a process that would see regime change in themedium to long term. In the meantime, it could work toacilitate convergence o regional and global actors arounda broad-based coalition that can oversee regime change,preerably short o use o orce.
